


Memoriam

by Mogseltof



Series: Prowl Week 2020 [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: (gratuitous use of flashbacks), AU Worldbuilding, Angst, Character Study, Coping, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fall of Praxus fic, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Prowl Week 2020, Trauma, hurt/comfort light on the comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:28:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23819899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mogseltof/pseuds/Mogseltof
Summary: Day 6 of Prowl Week, prompt "Peace"*“I hate anniversaries,” he said, like he always did.“So drink to forget,” said Smokescreen.
Relationships: Bluestreak/Cliffjumper (mentioned), Jazz/Optimus Prime/Prowl, Jazz/Prowl, Prowl/Smokescreen
Series: Prowl Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709491
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41
Collections: Prowl Week





	Memoriam

There was a knock at his door. Not totally needed; Prowl had been logging his footsteps as he approached, and he’d stopped getting any kind of productive work done hours ago, but he still made sure to log his changes on the datapad and sign them properly before he looked up and acknowledged Smokescreen. 

“I hate anniversaries,” he said, like he always did. 

“So drink to forget,” said Smokescreen, shrugging with one shoulder, his door hiking up with the movement. 

“Are you admitting to a commanding officer that you’re in possession of engex on an Autobot vessel?”

“Your shift finished five minutes ago, and repetition of a local saying isn’t exactly a solid basis for an inference,” said Smokescreen dryly. “Besides, if you wanted us to be sober one hundred percent of the time you’d’ve shut down all the stills on board long before we hit Earth.”

Prowl gave up pretending like he wasn’t already planning on going with Smokescreen and stood up, tucking the datapad into his in-tray for the morning shift. Tomorrow afternoon’s shift, rather, considering what they were going to be doing. “Just tell me it’s not from Wheeljack’s latest batch.”

“Nah,” said Smokescreen as they fell into step. “I sweet-talked Sideswipe into playing a game after he’d had a couple and fleeced enough of his good store out of him for all three of us.”

“Oh? The stuff he tried with the zinc deposits we found, or did you cheat him out of magnesium salts?” asked Prowl, trying not to sound amused through his reproving tone. 

Smokescreen grinned, unrepentant, as they passed a couple of mechs in the hall who did a double take at the sight of Prowl out of his office within two hours of his shift ending. “Nah, didn’t wanna bother with anything that’d require us to do more than, y’know, drink. You remember the batch he made when we got the materials from that abandoned copper mine?”

“Vividly,” said Prowl, pinging him with a humour glyph. “Jazz drank so much the charge blew his HUD entirely and he spent three days under Optimus’ berth trying to let it dispel. I had to spend two hours convincing him he hadn’t done something to his temporal tracking units either because he’d so thoroughly interrupted his memory writing processes.”

That had been after a particularly bad op that hadn’t worked out so well. Mirage had gotten himself in a tight spot, and Bumblebee had decided to use himself as bait to get them out of it. Jazz had declined to share all the details, but Bumblebee had been on light duties for close to a  _ month _ after getting out of Ratchet’s tender care, which was bordering on absurd for their usual healing times. 

Being this far from home, cut off from the rest of everyone, unable to reach out—it did strange things to them all, and the way the war was waged had changed since they’d landed here. 

The room they’d taken over for the night had been a lab at one point. It had been damaged when the ARK had hit Earth, but had been in use until Skyfire had joined the science team, at which point they’d knocked out the roof on the main lab and expanded there instead of spreading over several separate labs. It was semi popular as a place to retreat to, to get away from everything, for quiet when you couldn’t face the main rec room. Also for getting overcharged, in all senses of the word. It was hard to get any kind of privacy on a ship where it was usually three to a room, and while the rotating shift schedule helped, being on an alien planet in close contact with the enemy meant they spent a lot of time living in each other’s subspace, so to speak. 

A festive Christmas stocking someone had given them was hanging off the door on a splintered piece of metal, indicating the room was in use and that they weren’t open to interruptions, and Prowl remembered that Bluestreak had had the second shift before noon, and therefore plenty of time to get there ahead of them. 

Sure enough, when it slid open on rails that were well oiled and silent despite that not being on the maintenance roster, Bluestreak was already inside, taking up the most popular piece of furniture. The beanbag was an absolute nightmare to get out of, but it was incredibly comfortable and didn’t have anything to dig into seams or protoform, while moulding itself around everyone’s kibble. Bluestreak perked up, visibly and in field, as they entered the room, his faceplates and doors hitching up on their pressure cables, and two of his tyres spun with a slight rev of his engine. 

Prowl shut the door behind them, flagging the panel on the front with his ID and thus ensuring that no one would  _ want _ to bother them. Smokescreen was kicking the broad cushions into place before he sat, and Prowl dragged over one of the low slung stools that was meant for those of them that had more protruding back kibble. 

He sighed, getting comfortable as the weight of the day’s shift lifted from his shoulders. Bluestreak and Smokescreen were both watching him expectantly, and he crossed his arms under his bumper. “What now?”

“You’re logged as totally off-duty and not in a command position for the next shift?” said Bluestreak. 

“Next two,” said Prowl, his left door flicking in irritation. “I’m familiar enough with the way in which I’m going to have to deal with this.”

“Your strat-tac software is disengaged?” said Smokescreen, tapping his side in the way he did when he wanted to pull something out of his subspace but had to wait. 

“No, I don’t need to disengage it and it causes nausea to spin it back up afterwards,” said Prowl, shaking his head sharply. 

Both of them sent him pings of disapproval. “Okay one, liar,” said Smokescreen, holding up one finger, “it causes nausea to spin your  _ hardware _ back up when you re-engage it too quickly. Neither of them cause any nausea if you actually run the patches instead of hotfixing garbage on the fly. And two, it  _ also _ causes nausea to have that slag online when you build up excess charge through activities like, you know, drinking.”

Or interfacing, but he’d had that argument with both of them, Optimus,  _ and _ Jazz enough times over the years that none of them were willing to retread that ground. Smokescreen knew how to pick his battles, it was why he was so good at his job. Prowl stared at the pair of upheld fingers and sighed harder, his ventral fans spinning with the force of the expulsion. He shuttered his optics and killed the programs, the hottest part of his processor cycling down to idle. 

It did feel better, annoyingly enough. The strain on his coolant systems was a nigh constant irritation and a source of niggling conflict between him and Ratchet, and yeah, okay, his hotfixes needed work. “Done,” he said, taking a moment before he brought his sight back online, trying to ignore the exchange of self-congratulatory glyphs between the other two. “Happy now?”

“Immeasurably,” said Smokescreen cheerfully, lifting a leg to prod Prowl’s knee as he finally accessed his subspace and brought out what was a truly appalling amount of engex cubes. 

Bluestreak’s doors rolled in a circle in their sockets, swooping up as he made a grabbing hand motion at Smokescreen, accepting his first cube with no small glee. Smokescreen handed the second to Prowl, who accepted it with a certain amount of relief, and Smokescreen leaned back with his own. 

“To Praxus,” he said quietly, his field blossoming a little with the complicated emotions of bitterness, loss, regret. 

“To Praxus,” echoed Bluestreak and Prowl, barely a beat off each other, and each of them raised cube to intake.

* * *

Raucous laughter filled the rec room as Prowl went for the energon dispenser, processor sluggish with the lack of energy. Ratchet would likely snap at him to know how low he’d let his reserves get, and the only reason he’d probably been allowed to work through three straight duty shifts without pause was because Jazz wasn’t on base to log his hours. 

There was no record of Jazz doing so, but Prowl didn’t expect there to be. 

“—so the bouncer grabs me, by the  _ door panel _ —” Smokescreen’s voice rose above the laughter, a familiar cadence on the familiar words. He paused, swirling his cube gently as he eavesdropped. 

“No, Smokey, come on, we’ve heard this story a thousand times!” Seaspray’s voice was laden with static from engex consumption; Prowl hadn’t noticed anyone organising a ‘discreet get together’ for tonight, but also he’d been in his office for three shifts straight. He usually didn’t bother to check anyway, unless intel suggested unusual Decepticon activity they’d need to be on alert for. Hangovers don’t hurt, and a well lubricated army is a less tense one. 

“And you’re going to hear it again!” said Smokescreen loudly, prompting more laughter. “So, he literally  _ drags _ me across the casino floor and tosses me out, and tells me I’m  _ lucky _ for this fact—”

“‘Cause if you’d been at a less classy establishment he’d’ve just ripped one of them off,” finished Hound, grinning over his energon. 

“Exactly,” said Smokescreen, pointing at him. “And next thing I know, I’ve been blacklisted from  _ every _ legitimate gambling room in Praxus, because apparently these guys are both good  _ and _ well-respected and I was  _ stupid _ .”

“And you should have started at a less established joint,” said Bumblebee, kicking his legs in the air under his chair, mouth twitching into a smile. 

Smokescreen’s back doors flicked slightly, and he nodded, drinking his energon. “Well, my reasoning wasn’t  _ bad _ , I just failed to account for that bit. I thought it would be better to try at a larger casino first because there’d be more people around and I was less likely to get noticed.”

“ _ Rookie _ ,” crooned Bumblebee, leaning over the table, and Smokescreen swatted at one of his horns lightly, still grinning easily. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know that  _ now _ ,” said Smokescreen, easing back into his chair with a laugh, doors folding back so he can lean comfortably. “But I didn’t have military training, much less  _ Jazz’s _ idea of training back then, I was just a cocky drop out. Anyway, since he  _ mentioned _ ‘less classy establishments’, after a couple of days I figured I could try my new, uh, trade there—”

Cliffjumper was clearly more inebriated than he’d intended to be, because he was wheezing with near silent laughter at this stage of the tale, fully prepared for what was coming next, and only Bumblebee’s hand under his elbow was keeping him up on his chair. 

Smokescreen’s doors flickered happily under the attention, a movement Prowl was more familiar with from Bluestreak these days. Smokescreen tended to view socialisation as a type of work; it was nice to see him actually relaxed for once. He tuned back in to hear Smokescreen telling the rest of his story. 

“—so the guy who I  _ think _ is running the game pulls me into the back office, and he’s being gentler than the bouncer so like, I’m not worried, until I meet the guy who is  _ actually _ running the game, and it turns out I’ve been practicing my ‘newspark’s first card shark’ routine at  _ mob tables _ , like some kind of  _ fucking idiot _ —”

Bumblebee gave up at this stage, and Cliffjumper hit the floor in a loose arrangement of limbs, hiccuping with laughter as excess charge escaped his plating in very tiny sparks that jumped across seams from the plating around his main processor units. Prowl’s mouth plates twitched with a small smile. 

“So he explains to me, in very small words that a little idiot like me can understand,” the self deprecating humour pings bouncing off several people around the room, “that I’m going to pay back every single damn shanix I’ve won from  _ every _ table I’ve sat at since I picked up my ‘adorably corrosive hobby’,  _ plus _ interest, and I’m going to do so within the next orn, or I’m going to end up in a literal chop shop while my ‘clearly over-engineered’ processors do double time on someone’s back shelf.” Smokescreen grinned wildly at this, head tilted back like an old man in a human sitcom telling a wild story from his youth. 

By human standards, he’d absolutely qualify. Prowl’s heard... More of Smokescreen’s stories than most; he had a tendency to try and ‘walk on the rough side of life’ while he was studying. The stories he had from Praxus mostly reminded Prowl of things Chip had relayed from his undergrad friends. 

Smokescreen leaned forward onto the tabletop, door’s flicking back and forth again, optics brightening. “So then, the first guy, ‘gentle’, he pins me down and literally rips out one of my rear sensors, right there in the office while the bossmech watches,” said Smokescreen, making several of the spectators wince in exaggerated sympathy. By this point, Smokescreen’s relaying of this story was more of a group performance than anything else. “So I raced my stupid little bumper back home, doing  _ double _ the local speed limit—copped a nice fine from a grumpy Enforcer on the way back for my trouble—packed my subspace with everything I could carry, and raced my way to the city limits!”

“And you left Praxus in your rear mirror, fuel hot in your tanks, saying goodbye to the cosy life you once knew,” finished Hound for him, toasting him with his half full energon cube. 

Smokescreen toasted him back, grinning lopsidedly. “Last time I saw those pretty towers and that big, beautiful river,” he said wistfully. “Backwards and lit up, like most of my past.”

Seaspray had splayed over the table, the draining of the charge from whatever he’d drunk leaving him languid. “Did you ever go back?”

Smokescreen huffed a laugh, shoulder vents flaring a little. “Nah, told you, that was how I left. C’mon, ‘Spray, You were the one saying I tell this story too much.”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” said Seaspray, his field blooming with impatience, sloppy, wide, fuzzy at the edges. “I mean,  _ after _ . You know, to see what it looked like, visit the memorial, pay respects.”

The mood had dropped like a stone at his words, and Smokescreen’s doors were pointing down at the floor with high tension in his visible cables, field tucked tight and unreadable against his plating. “No,” he said eventually, downing the rest of his energon and standing up from the table. “Never found the time, you know. Busy with the war effort.”

“S’a shame,” mumbled Seaspray, seemingly unaware of the effect he’d had with his words. 

“S’fine,” said Smokescreen casually, his usual smile returning to his faceplates. His doors swung up a little again, but there was still tension in how he held them, and Prowl watched them carefully. Smokescreen’s poker face was great, when he was expecting to be playing. “I wanna finish my full ration before I get back to defrag,” Smokescreen was saying as he turned from the table. 

When he made his way to the dispenser, he flicked his field against Prowl’s, filled with false humour. “Didn’t see you standing there, sir,” he said wryly with that weird emphasis he always put on Prowl’s formal address. 

Prowl shrugged. “Long shift. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, exactly, but—”

“Not like it’s private,” said Smokescreen, watching his cube dispense. “You’ve heard it before, and we weren’t exactly being quiet.”

“Still.” Prowl looked at the last few sips of his ration. “I didn’t realise that you hadn’t been back, to see what was left.”

Smokescreen looked at him directly at that, and he pinged Prowl with several glyphs—despair, tiredness, hatred, mocking humour. “D’you remember where you were when Praxus fell?” he asked, using the vocal frequency they’d designated for human sarcasm. 

Prowl snorted and drained what was left of his cube. It was something they heard a lot, especially in the early days of the war. Every time you met someone new in those days: Iaconians, Polyhexians; civilians, other Autobots. It didn’t really matter, the conversation would inevitably turn to the war, and they’d ask, in that same tone, every time, “ _ Do you remember where you were when Praxus fell? Primus, I was just sitting there— _ ”

“I was in a bar,” said Smokescreen softly, just between him and Prowl. “In Kaon.”

Prowl knew he’d ended up there eventually—a lot of people had, when they were lost, or running—but Smokescreen was vague about the timeline of that part of his life. He’d been under the impression that Smokescreen had made it to Tyger Pax by that point, actually, but now that he went over the data points, it made more sense that he hadn’t left Kaon til after. 

Smokescreen kept talking. “There was a feed, over the card tables,” he said, still watching the full cube he’d just dispensed where it sat. At this time of night there wasn’t a queue, otherwise someone might have grumbled at him to move along by now. “Usually played the gladiator feed, for punters, y’know. But it got interrupted by the news cast, on all open channels. First footage of the bombings, the flyovers. The casualties. Do you know what the reaction was?”

Prowl didn’t answer. Solemnity, had been most people’s. Horror, despair, sorrow. He could remember Optimus’ reaction, writ across his memory banks like a brand. 

“They cheered,” said Smokescreen quietly, picking up his cube. “Not all of them, I think. But. They cheered. Anyway. I don’t visit graves, I’m not equipped for that.”

He walked away, and Prowl watched him cross the room to join a different table, doors held high and loose.

* * *

The first hit of engex registered in Prowl’s processor, his internal sensors lighting up. Smokescreen sighed happily, relaxing back in the cushions with a satisfied bloom in his field where it bumped up against Bluestreak and Prowl’s. 

Bluestreak let out a high pitched hum, downing half his cube in one go. He lowered it, doors vibrating like a hummingbird’s wings for a brief moment, and fixed his optics on Prowl and Smokescreen in turn, determined. “Okay, so, let’s—”

“ _ No _ ,” cut in Smokescreen, groaning, and Prowl sympathised with him. “C’mon, Blue, not this year, please. Just give us a break.”

Smokescreen would do that, sometimes, use ‘year’ to talk about the orbital rotation of the planet, to remind people that they were on Earth not Cybertron, that holding onto the old dates and holidays was pointless when the calendar didn’t even come close to matching. When the planet wasn’t around for them to honour. If he were sentimental, Prowl would almost say that he could feel sadness in his spark at the idea of distancing themselves from their own people that way. It wasn’t like they’d picked a Gregorian date to assign this to, after all, Smokescreen was the one who’d made sure they did this, and he’d kept them on the old calendar. 

“It’s important!” snapped Bluestreak, glaring at Smokescreen. “You get us together to do this every time the date comes around which means that you  _ know _ it’s important, but important doesn’t mean we just sit around drinking until we crash and being miserable! You have to remember the good with the bad! It was our home, there were good people there and they deserve to be remembered for the good not just for the fact that they died!”

“Oh what was so good about it anyway?” said Smokescreen irritably. “It’s gone, we’re not even on Cybertron anymore, we’re drinking because it’s what you do to remember the dead.”

Bluestreak scowled, drinking more of his cube with an aggressive uptick in his doors. “It was good because the people there made it good!”

Prowl watched, finding it difficult to feel invested. They had a variation on this argument every year, and every year he felt more and more tired. He drained his cube and spoke up. “The river,” he said, cutting across Smokescreen and Bluestreak. “My one good thing that I miss this year is the river.”

Smokescreen’s plating ruffled and resettled, and he took a drink from his cube, lips in a thin line. At least it was honest emotion. 

Bluestreak relaxed a little, drinking more engex and picking up a new cube. “I fell in the river, when I was just starting out at the academy,” he said cheerfully. 

“We all did, all the campuses were on the riverfront,” said Smokescreen irritably, but he wasn’t pushing at either of them to stop. 

“I wasn’t overcharged, though,” Bluestreak pointed out with a grin. “I just had—oh what’s the human saying? Two right feet?”

“Left, but same difference I think,” said Smokescreen, grinning. “And if you weren't overcharged, it doesn’t count—I’m right, aren’t I, Prowl?”

“He is,” said Prowl, nodding. “You have to be overcharged or pushed in. Better if it's both.”

“You were both?” said Smokescreen, delighted, pushing another cube Prowl’s way. 

Prowl flicked them a small smile. “Law’s competitive, and I was good,” he said, shrugging, doors wide and high with joking pride. “I didn’t have many friends that first teaching period.”

Bluestreak laughed. 

“I got pushed in when I was in the mathematics program,” said Smokescreen, grinning still, and his field had relaxed significantly as he picked up a second cube of his own. Fast way for them to start the night, but none of them were in the business of pretending they were trying to do anything other than get totally cratered. 

“Was mathematics your second or third attempt at qualifying?” asked Prowl, hooking one leg over the other with a minor transformation to settle in comfortably for a long night. 

“Third and last,” said Smokescreen, toasting Prowl. “Which is why I got pushed. Psych was my second—it was a game in the first period students that you had to figure out how to enrage the others into pushing you, so I just carried over automatically when I got to mathematics without thinking about it. Turns out numbers mechs don’t spend terribly much time thinking about the  _ reason _ someone’s pushing your buttons.”

“How many times did you get pushed in?” asked Bluestreak, doors flicking happily. 

“Once in psych, three times in math,” said Smokescreen promptly. “I only instigated the first two times, the third guy was convinced I was cheating because I aced the probability modules while I was barely scraping by in everything else.”

“Oh yeah?” said Prowl skeptically, drinking more of his cube. “And how much did you take from him?”

Smokescreen’s grin widened and he winked exaggeratedly. “All of his petty drinking cash, a lamp, and his homework for the prime number algebraic permutations module we had together.”

“I think I might sympathise with this unnamed mech who had to share time with you,” said Prowl, flagging his humour pings slightly slower than usual as the charge started to build up. 

“Speak for yourself,” said Bluestreak, laughter in his tone. “How’d you end up overcharged  _ and _ pushed in?”

Prowl hummed, drinking a little more, taking his second cube slower than the first. “Did you ever play ‘Expert’?” 

Smokescreen groaned, covering his face, shoulders shaking a little. “Oh  _ Primus _ .”

“No,” said Bluestreak, shrugging. “Isn’t it supposed to be a study game? We didn’t really do that kind of thing at my academy.”

“It allegedly started as a study game,” said Prowl dryly. “I’ve yet to meet anyone who can remember anything after  _ playing _ it, though Ratchet swears it’s the most effective study aid he ever had.”

“Didn’t Ratchet nearly fail the first stage of medical school?” said Smokescreen, staring at the ceiling. “I used to question that, but suddenly I’m not anymore.”

“Ignore him,” said Prowl, looking at Bluestreak. “Expert’s the kind of game you play when you’ve got friends in different fields, or if you enjoy trying to outmanoeuvre people in your field.”

“Sounds like it’s right up Smokescreen’s alley,” said Bluestreak slyly, and Smokescreen responded with another exaggerated groan. 

“You’re supposed to be honest,” said Prowl, shrugging. “Basically you take turns explaining a complicated technical thing that only someone who’s studied the subject would understand or recognise. If you get something wrong about it, or if someone else guesses what you’re talking about, you have to drink. But if you explain it correctly and they don’t guess it, everyone else has to drink.”

“Oh!” Said Bluestreak, laughing. “So the more overcharged you are the more likely you are to get more overcharged.”

“Exactly,” said Prowl, nodding sagely. “Which is why you don’t play with people who study the same things unless your aim is  _ actually _ to burn out three processing units and spend the next eight days walking into walls because your proximity sensors haven’t dispelled all the charge.”

“Is that from experience?” asked Bluestreak with a wicked grin. 

“Not mine,” said Prowl, taking another drink. 

“I told you that in confidence,” grumbled Smokescreen. 

“Smokescreen’s very bad at Expert.”

“So you played a drinking game and someone pushed you in the river?” asked Bluestreak, sipping more engex, doors flicking twice more. Prowl was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that Bluestreak might have pregamed them. 

Prowl shrugged. “Like I said, I wasn’t very popular.”

Bluestreak laughed again. “I kind of wish I’d spent more time hanging around with students from other campuses now! We always stuck together, and we didn’t really do the whole pushing each other into the river thing? Or falling in overcharged! I know it was like, supposed to be tradition, but we really weren’t supposed to be getting overcharged at all! The instructors all took it really really seriously!”

Prowl remembered one class during his introductory period at law where half the cohort had turned up still running high from the night before. The instructor had winked at them all on the way out and discreetly shown her own cube of engex hidden in her lecture desk. Smokescreen had similar tales from all three of the schools he’d enrolled in and failed to graduate from. You usually got it out of your system in the first couple of periods, but hangovers weren’t uncommon on any age of student on the campuses Prowl had been on. 

Bluestreak was still going. “It was all very responsibility! I know some mechs would go off on the rest days, but nobody ever really talked about it! We tried to swim out to the Singer though—do you remember the Singer?”

“Of course we remember the Singer,” said Smokescreen, waving a hand in the air. His second cube was already empty, and he was reaching out for a third. “Every student in Praxus knew the Singer! You only had to drive past her to get to class every damn day, Blue!”

Bluestreak huffed, vents settling a moment too slowly. “Our school held the record for the most times decorating her,” he said, finishing his second cube as well. Prowl would have to drink more quickly if he wanted to keep up; he had no intention of still being sober while both Bluestreak and Smokescreen only amped up higher and higher. “I got nominated for my unit to be the first one to swim out to her in the period!”

“What’d you paint on her doors?” asked Smokescreen, swapping the hand he held his cube in as he shifted. There was a slight buzz to his voice, the quick intake of the engex building up his charge more quickly than usual. 

“I gave her a new chevron, actually,” said Bluestreak loftily, reaching for a third cube. “And I put a fake energon spigot on her bumper.  _ And _ I didn’t get caught doing it!”

Every new enforcer did shifts on the campus district of town; Prowl had seen his fair share of sheepish, overcharged, proud, grinning, or embarrassed students of the various schools, usually still with river water dripping from their seams, being written up for the act of vandalising the statue of the Singer. She’d apparently originally been erected on the shore of the river, giving her performance to those who came across the bridge to reach the schools behind her, but had been moved onto a podium in the water to discourage vandals. 

If the enforcers who  _ ran _ the campus precinct were to be believed, instances had only gone up after the city council had done that. 

Prowl looked at his cube; he still had more than half left. He grimaced and drained it anyway, reaching for a third before it could hit him.

* * *

Prowl had had a headache. He was carrying three datapads across the floor of their main response room, and running a particularly gnarly problem through his tactical programming at the same time when he realised that everyone around him was stock still, staring at all the screens connected to the open networks. He was inclined to ignore it, most of his processing power focusing on trying to hammer out every outlier in the problem they were  _ still _ having in Vaporex, when his public comm band received the emergency broadcast as well, and he realised it was about Praxus—but not  _ from _ Praxus. 

He opened it without much thought, curious, but still concerned with Vaporex. 

He stopped. He paced directly to the nearest feed screen, every part of his being focused on what was being shown. In the back of his processor, a rogue code tree bloomed without him snipping it, and returned an optimal solution instructing him that half the city council would require executing (...a recurring bug that he still needed to patch), and it sat there in his priority queue, waiting for him to accept or dismiss. 

His first instinct was to dismiss it as a misreport—a tragic one, but still a misreport—because he knew what Praxus’ skyline looked like, and that wasn’t it. It was higher. Praxus didn’t really have an industrial centre either, so that much smoke in the air meant it was more likely to be a city with a much higher percentage of working class or labour occupants. Iacon had been something of a culture shock in that way; Prowl was an  _ enforcer _ , certainly no one in Praxus had considered him more than working class, he hadn’t actually realised what other cities’ class stratification looked like until he’d left. 

The newsfeed couldn’t get close enough for him to hear the scream of the seeker engines, but he could see the shapes. Whoever was narrating the reports was talking fast, using a vocal mod to keep tone and frequency coherent, but the speed varied the way it did when your emotional regulation was running out of control. Prowl could see the river running out of the city, right where it always had, and it was filled with dust. 

“Prowl.” 

Prowl tore his eyes away, the voice of the reporter still echoing around the room. The datapad on the top of the pile’s screen had shattered under his hands. It’s blinking screen showed only the report he’d been meaning to read, but why would it show anything else? The reason they even used these datapads was because they couldn’t be connected to any kind of network, physical copies had a far lower rate of interception. 

“ _ Prowl _ !”

A hand landed on his shoulder, and Prowl jerked around. Ori—Optimus stared at him, projecting no emotion in his field, tight control Prowl had rarely ever seen from him. “What is it?” he said. “I can’t—uh, Vaporex, we have to—”

“Go,” said Optimus softly, watching the feed over his shoulder before looking back at Prowl. 

“I can’t, I’m needed here, there’s nothing I can—”

“Prowl, it’s your home. Go.”

Prowl stared at him, trying to find the words. Optimus stared back, his hand heavy on Prowl’s shoulder. One of the newer Autobots, a recruit Flareblaze had picked up for them only a few days ago, approached nervously and stood just outside of normal field range before pinging Prowl with a glyph for shared sorrow. 

Prowl fled. 

His new status thanks to Optimus meant the trip from Crystal City didn’t take nearly as long as it normally would, but he still had to make the last leg to the outskirts of Praxus under his own power. Every open band was filled with chatter, flagged for use by emergency responders only, and all directions pointed him to the most likely place to go being the hub for all coordination set up on what had been the main highway leading into the city. 

It was barely more than a tent, all things considered. Not many people looked at Prowl as he walked in, though his markings and public ID meant people moved for him automatically, and the few people who did notice his frame-type gave him solemn looks, pity flitting around the edges of tightly controlled fields. There were a lot of people in the room, and a lot of talking happening at once. Lots of other Praxians, travel worn, dusty, frightened, wide-eyed. About half of them were wearing volunteer bands, moving about like they were operating on only the most basic functions. More were in lines in front of tables, and several were crouched around the edges of the room, clutching at themselves or each other, volunteers crouched next to them, talking quietly. Someone was keening with grief. 

There was a map of the city prominently displayed, divided into search quadrants, and the areas that had already been searched were flagged. Two counts were up above it; the count of survivors retrieved was horrifyingly small compared to the dead. The death count was rising, survivors weren’t. Abstractly, Prowl realised the quadrant covering the streets where he’d grown up and lived for most of his younger life had been cleared. The section where he’d lived and worked as an enforcer before his transfer out of Praxus was still greyed out, awaiting volunteers to start searching. 

He didn’t think much of it before joining the queue in front of the table marked “QUERIES: ONE QUESTION AT A TIME”. A few people gave him odd looks as he joined; and Prowl realised a lot of them probably thought he was an emergency responder. A couple of people wavered, hesitant, as if to let him jump ahead, and he shook his head slightly. 

When he reached the front of the line he was in front of a volunteer who’s field wobbled with exhaustion and unhappiness, and she stared at him blankly for a second, taking in his creds and markings. 

“Crystal City?” She said, tilting her head. “Primus, sorry, we’re not prepped for you yet, we didn’t think you’d get here so soon—“

“I’m not official,” said Prowl. “I came ahead.”

Understanding dawned in her, and her optics flickered over his frame, weariness taking over again. “Sorry,” she said. “There’s a lot going on. What’s your question?”

“Were any survivors found in quadrant fourteen?” he asked, not sure what he hoped the answer would be. 

“One,” she said after a moment, nodding grimly. “We haven’t got the ID logs yet, everything was scrambled, so if you can provide a positive identification that would be great. Emergency medical tent has the red flag, it’s almost as big as this one, but back the way you came, you can’t miss it. Treatment bay should be flagged with the quadrant number.”

Prowl nodded and turned to go. 

“Sir!” she called out quickly, and he looked back. “Volunteers for search and rescue are being organised under the blue flag outside and to the left, if you want to help.”

“Thank you,” said Prowl, nodding again, and then her attention was on the distraught mech who’d been behind him. 

If the hub tent had been organised chaos, emergency medical was just chaos. ‘Treatment bay’ had perhaps been too generous of a term to use—Prowl found the flag for quadrant 14 over a stool that looked like it had been pulled from an office building, set next to a cart of supplies so that it wasn’t in the main path around the space. Medical staff didn’t even look at him as he picked his way around the room carefully, they were all too busy running from one patient to the next. Alarms were blaring, people were yelling, every communication band was active and full of traffic to the point Prowl could almost feel it on his external sensors. 

Back in the Autobot main base in this kind of chaos his first instinct would be to grab one of Ratchet’s staff by an elbow, ask what was needed, and just carry on. He couldn’t do that here. 

The quadrant flags were brightly coloured and stuck where people could see them, hanging over active berths, on the outside of the very few demountable treatment bays set up. There was no rhyme or reason to the order of the numbers—or rather, they were triaged, the rhyme or reason was in the severity of attention they needed as opposed to the number they had. 

Prowl stuck to the edges and ducked out of any incoming people with medical markings, keeping one optic trained on every flag he passed, looking for 14. When he found it, he stared hard for a few moments, taking in every inch of the mechs frame. And then he looked again. 

Still no idea who they were. 

No one was attending to them, so Prowl wedged himself in to one side, out of the way, suddenly feeling hopeless and exhausted. What had he even been expecting?

A weak field flickered against his own, and Prowl realised that through the mostly crushed helm the mech was both conscious and watching him. “Sorry,” he said. 

“Wh-wh-wHO ARE you?” asked the mech, vocal frequencies all over the place. 

“My name’s Prowl,” said Prowl. “I’m sorry, I can go, I just need a mom—”

“Sta-aa-ay!” warbled the mech. “PLEASE.”

“I’ll stay,” said Prowl, nodding quickly. “What’s your name?”

“BLU-BLU-BLU-BLUESTREAK!” he bleated out loudly. 

Any other time, and Prowl would not have been able to deal with the volume. Here it went entirely unnoticed by everyone around them, barely even registering as unusual over the other noises. “What do you do, Bluestreak?” asked Prowl, keeping his tone even. Medical protocol was to shut down all receivers during treatment, he remembered even as he lined up reassuring pings and glyphs to send across before dismissing them. 

“STUDENT,” barked Bluestreak. “Off-offi-officer academememey.”

He looked like a student, Prowl realised, under all the crumpling and damage. New adult. Probably only in his first period of study, even. “Were you on a rest day?” he asked. “You were found pretty far from the campus district.”

“Fri-EE-ends!” wailed Bluestreak. “No one—tell me! Was with f-f-f-FRIENDS! Where—” His vocaliser cut off into static, and he looked at Prowl with pleading optics, one of his severely damaged back panels twitching agitatedly. 

Prowl felt like his own vocaliser was stalled. He’d given this kind of news a thousand times before, but never like this, never so close to his spark like this. He drew on the times he’d delivered bad news, as an enforcer, as an advisor, as a commander, and tried to settle himself. “You were the only survivor found in your quadrant,” he said carefully. “I’m sorry.”

Bluestreak’s wail was warbling, intercut with static. Prowl stayed put and listened.

* * *

At some point Smokescreen had coaxed him off the stool and onto the floor cushions. It  _ was _ more comfortable, and Smokescreen was pleasantly warm, their plating grounding the tiny sparks of overcharge escaping each other's seams. Prowl had lost count of the number of cubes each of the three of them had consumed somewhere along the way, but they were down to just one left once they finished what they were holding. 

He couldn’t quite track the time since he’d last noticed one of them taking a sip though, so that was probably fine. 

The level of overcharge he’d reached was that hazy, pleasant plateau, where all of his background processes were deliciously satiated and buzzing, and the things he normally tracked—time, field control, incoming comms, anything outside this room—didn’t matter, drowned out. Smokescreen and Bluestreak were still arguing about... Something. If he tuned in enough he should be able to shut them down pretty easily. 

“Nope!” said Bluestreak loudly, shaking his head. His whole body moved with the motion, door panels shaking loosely from their sockets, the beanbag making a truly atrocious sound. “Nope, nope, nope you are  _ wrong _ !”

“Are you  _ doubting _ me?” slurred Smokescreen. “Baby  _ Blue _ I am  _ wounded _ !”

“You are wrong  _ and _ stupid!” crowed Bluestreak, sounding delighted, and he leaned forward so far he nearly tipped out of the beanbag. “And you can’t distract me! My one thing I miss—”

“Noooo-oo!” complained Smokescreen, throwing his head back so that it clunked against Prowl’s. He reached up and patted Prowl’s chevron clumsily in apology. “Abso- _ lute _ -ly not! I worked  _ so hard _ to not listen to this!”

“And you’re going to listen anyway!” scolded Bluestreak, grinning widely, stretched out to unnatural proportions on his faceplate. “There was, there was this uh,  _ place _ —”

“If this is going to be yet another fragged up story about your exhibitionist interfacing friends—” complained Smokescreen loudly, still leaned against Prowl. 

Bluestreak blew a raspberry at him. On humans it was a wet, ugly noise, but usually inoffensive. The Autobot adapted equivalent could not be called ‘inoffensive’ by any stretch of the definition. Prowl clumsily pinged several rude glyphs at Bluestreak, who laughed helplessly in response. “It’s not  _ my _ fault that Smokescreen’s such a prude!”

“I am  _ not _ a prude!” Smokescreen jerked upwards, doors extending up with indignant tension, field wobbling around him. “I get jacked more than most people on this slagging ship, and sure as the Pit more than you!”

Bluestreak laughed again, discordant and loud, sounding more carefree than he had in a long time. “You do  _ not _ get jacked more than me, you just  _ talk _ about getting jacked more than me! Besides, who was it that walked in on me  _ literally getting jacked _ and then acted like he had a stick up his exhaust every fragging time he saw me for the next sixty-odd shifts? Because it wasn’t  _ Prowl _ !”

“THINGS ARE NOT MEANT TO  _ GO _ IN THAT PORT!” howled Smokescreen at a near deafening volume, leaning over to slam his hand on the floor in front of him, making Prowl wince and reach up to manually turn down the receivers on his audials, the internal commands no longer responding. “Sorry Prowl—that’s not  _ prudery _ , it’s  _ common fragging sense _ !”

“Things go in that port just fine, as I  _ clearly _ demonstrated!” exclaimed Bluestreak in gleeful tones. “Cliffjumper liked it and he wasn’t hurt!”

“Cliffjumper likes a lot of stupid slag, and ‘not hurt’ isn’t some kind of plat-standard for quality interfacing!” argued Smokescreen, displaying a truly terrifying force of opinion Prowl hadn’t quite realised he possessed for the topic. 

“Since when are you jacking Cliffjumper?” he asked muzzily, feeling three steps behind the topic. 

Bluestreak waved a hand impatiently. “It’s only  _ sometimes _ , it’s not a big deal! Smokescreen’s just mad because no one’s ever bothered to try introducing external charge in  _ his _ —”

“If you finish that sentence i’m going to throw my cube at you,” Smokescreen informed him. “I don’t  _ want _ to try building charge there—wait are you saying that was a  _ live prod _ ?”

Bluestreak dissolved into giggles. He tried speaking again three different times, cut off by his own laughter each time before he managed to get the words out. “Duh! See what you open yourself up to when you frag people outside of your ‘real friends’?”

“Hard pass,” said Smokescreen, leaning back into Prowl. 

“Dumb!” said Bluestreak again, and he clambered to his feet clumsily, making more rustling noises from the beanbag. He collected the last cube victoriously and subspaced it, ignoring Smokescreen’s indignant noise. “You can stay here being dumb! I’m going to go find someone to help me dump this charge the  _ fun _ way, or I’m going to be useless for at  _ least _ three days! Thanks Prowl!”

“Goodbye,” said Prowl automatically, before his sluggish processor caught up and reminded him that he hadn’t really done anything, Smokescreen was the one who had gotten the engex and corralled them all—but the door was already sliding shut behind Bluestreak’s door panels. 

Smokescreen patted his helm again and it took on a more affectionate nature. Prowl ran through the last stages of the back and forth again, trying to figure out why Bluestreak had left so quickly. “What’d he mean, ‘real friends’?” he asked, trying to filter out the static in his voice with little success. 

Smokescreen huffed. “I don’t like jacking everyone I meet,” he said, turning his head to rest his chevron against Prowl’s. “I like to actually, y’know,  _ like _ people? Friendships. Actual relationships. I know a lot about nearly everyone, if someone’s jacking me I want it to be someone who knows me just as good.”

“You jack me, though,” objected Prowl, trying to make it make sense. 

“Yup,” said Smokescreen, one of his thumbs resting on Prowl’s hip seam. “Cause you’re my friend. Even if you’re dumb about realising it.”

“I thought that you were my friend but I wasn’t yours,” mumbled Prowl, tilting his head back a little as Smokescreen nestled his face into his neck. “I think I said that right. People don’t like me. It’s your job to like people.”

Smokescreen laughed helplessly. “Dumb!” he said, trying to set his vocaliser to match Bluestreak’s frequency and not quite matching it. “Mhm. You were wrong, but, speaking of friends, and jacking, and dumping charge the fun way—“

Prowl had just realised that Bluestreak had been trying to say what he missed when Smokescreen had derailed him, and suddenly felt bad that he hadn’t stepped in. Too much engex, should he tell Smokescreen off? As a friend, not an officer, this isn’t official in any sense of the word. 

What came out instead was: “You never say anything you liked about Praxus.”

Smokescreen sighed, vents rattling with the force, and his lips skated over Prowl’s neck cables. “I didn’t like anything about Praxus,” he murmured. “I was depressed, and broke, and useless, and I didn't fit the system.”

“The system was bad,” said Prowl quietly. 

“Yeah,” agreed Smokescreen, sounding tired. “...Shift change is in eleven minutes.”

“You can tell?” He shouldn’t have been surprised, he should have been keeping track of that, actually. 

“I didn’t drink as much as you two,” said Smokescreen, pulling back and grinning lopsidedly. “And I drank more, regularly, than either of you before all of this.”

“How’s your charge?”

Smokescreen shrugged. “I’ve got the next shift down, then I’m on. I can drain it in that time, or find someone to help me dump it, either way I can cop the hangover. You gonna deal with yours or do I have to start encouraging you to dump some of it now?” His thumb rubbed again, sparking the plating edges along Prowl’s hips. 

Prowl huffed a quiet laugh, head tilting back, pleasantly fuzzed with the electric feeling. “Jazz is down for this shift. I think he might actually follow through on one of his extravagant threats if I  _ don’t _ let him jack it out of me for once. He’s always complaining that I never cycle down enough to build any decent charge.”

“He’s a demanding boss, wouldn’t wanna have him as a lover,” joked Smokescreen, finally abandoning Prowl’s frame and standing up, offering a hand. 

Prowl took it and climbed to his feet with only a slight wobble. “He’s a good lover, when I let him.”

Smokescreen grinned. “Good.”

“It is,” said Prowl, nodding. “Thanks, Smokescreen.”

* * *

Prowl had taken a detour into the already cleared quadrants first, before his volunteer shift was scheduled to start. No one objected, he was just given a reminder to stay in the cleared sections and pay attention to the flags. He wasn’t really sure what he was looking for, but he’d made his way to quadrant 14 anyway. 

The streets he’d grown up on were destroyed very thoroughly. He could barely recognise any of the buildings; he could only tell he was standing in the right place because of his internal locator and the flags. He’d stared at the building for a while, trying to figure out what to feel, before heading to the spot where Bluestreak had been found.

There was a bright cyan flag sticking out of the ground, indicating a survivor had been taken from that spot. Barely a foot away was an enormous hunk of building with three grey flags stuck in the ground next to it. Prowl could see a greyed out arm under the rubble. Bluestreak had apparently been excised out from under a smaller portion of building; Prowl could see where they’d cut away the pieces to pull him out. 

He wasn’t sure what propelled his next decision—well, no, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly what motivated him, but it wasn’t a  _ good _ reason. 

He left the cleared quadrants behind, moving into the sections of ruins that hadn’t been searched, or cleared. That were still unsafe. No one had started collecting the dead in even the cleared quadrants, yet, but every time he moved past a corpse without a flag next to it, something twinged in his processor. He didn’t find any survivors on his way, but it felt like he was walking in a daze. The streets weren’t clear enough to drive, the streets were barely  _ there _ anymore. 

By the time he came to the district he’d been working in as an enforcer, Prowl felt completely dissociated from his frame, barely aware of his surroundings. He paused, foot crunching on a piece of signwork. It was the precinct name for the enforcer station. He crouched, pushing some debris off it, and a strange emotion swelled in him at the sight of the graffitti over the official building designation. They’d always had an issue with that. 

“I wondered when you’d show up.”

Prowl was on his feet and whipped around in barely a moment, caught totally unawares. No one was supposed to be in this quadrant,  _ he _ wasn’t supposed to be in this quadrant!

Starscream was standing in the middle of what was left of the street, staring straight at Prowl, and Prowl belatedly realised that that was why he’d turned, why all of his alerts had launched. Starscream’s voice was raspy and carrying from prolonged damage, instantly recognisable. 

He reached for a weapon that wasn’t there; all volunteers had emptied their subspace to carry the emergency medical kits, rations, and long range units, keeping everything else free to collect anything important. He was unarmed. And Starscream was  _ right there _ . 

Starscream’s foot shifted in the rubble, dragging through with his thruster, making a rough noise that broke the heavy silence around them. “Did you watch?” he rasped in that same voice. 

Prowl didn’t answer, caught up in memory all of the very few interactions he’d had with Starscream before all of this had started. He’d been more concerned about Orion, too worried about what they were doing to give the far-from-home seeker much thought, he’d already regretted that—

“How did it feel, Prowl?” asked Starscream, staying exactly where he was. His voice carried without much effort, and there was strangely no recognisable emotion in it, though his crimson optics were aimed directly at him, accusing, burning a hole through Prowl’s plating and into his  _ spark _ . “How did it feel to watch your city  _ burn _ ?”

* * *

There was a message in Prowl’s inbox from Jazz. Jazz hadn’t marked it as urgent or with any priority, so it was just sitting there, waiting for him to be done. When he opened it, it was like a small weight lifted from his shoulders, and he changed course. He didn’t want to go back to his own quarters anyway, and Jazz kept very cramped spaces. Optimus’ quarters were where they went to be comfortable and safe, and that sounded very good right about now. When he tapped the door to open though, it wasn’t that Jazz had hijacked Optimus’ quarters. Both of them were waiting for him. 

He stopped in the doorway, frowning slightly as they looked expectantly at him. “...Optimus has command shift,” he mumbled eventually, stepping all the way inside. 

“Ironhide has the physical shift,” said Optimus, tapping one of his finials. “I’m ‘on call’, so to speak. I wanted to see you, after.”

“I’m fine,” said Prowl wearily, letting the door slide shut behind him, and making his way to the comfortable looking berth that held both of the people he cared about most in the world. “Just. Charged up. Tired.”

Optimus shifted so that the space on the berth was in between them, and Jazz reached out and caught Prowl as he climbed in, gyros spinning. The hands on his frame anchored him, and he groaned, leaning into Jazz’s touch as Optimus curled around them. 

“Anniversaries are hard,” said Jazz softly, his fingers finding the socket Prowl’s left door panel sat in and stroking there in a way that buzzed wonderfully. “This one means a lot.”

“A lot of dead, a lot in the past,” said Prowl, field wobbling as his processor spun, failing to adjust to the change from vertical to horizontal quickly enough. “We have to think of the future.”

“S’not just the anniversary of Praxus,” said Jazz mildly, his fingers moving with more intention, making Prowl start tensing in the good way. “Anniversary of a lot of things. Of people realising what’s wrong. Of the war starting—“

“No,” said Prowl. “The war started when the senate razed Vos, it started before that even.”

“It started on Cybertron,” said Optimus gently, his hand joining Jazz’s, a warm, solid presence all around Prowl. “With Cybertron. Not in or for any one city or person, or people. The whole thing.”

Prowl made a hoarse sound, not quite a sob, and Jazz crooned musically in his audial. “I should be able to see how it ends,” said Prowl, frustrated, the excess charge completely destroying his processor-to-vocaliser filter. “I can’t see it, I can’t figure it out, it’s all just going to keep happening again and again.”

“It’s going to end,” said Optimus firmly. “It’s going to end  _ here _ . I promise. I’m going to take care of it. I’m going to take care of  _ you _ .”

He can’t, Prowl wants to say, but more than that, he wants to believe it. So he lets them. He surrenders to the charge threatening to take over his processor, and he lets them take care of him.

**Author's Note:**

> hmm. Next time I get the bright idea to write a nine thousand word character study for a fandom event less than three days prior to the day for it, can one of you like, astral project into my head killing me instantly instead?
> 
> This is the "hurt" part of the comfort/hurt/comfort sandwich that is the Prowl Week series lmao, I promise tomorrow's will be nice. ANYWAY yeah this is kind of based off a timeline and set up that I haven't quite finished developing, but I had all these scenes in my head separately, and it made sense the mesh 'em together. Felt good to get them on the page, and I hope the nonsense was satisfying for you to read in some way!


End file.
